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Exit Strategy: Movies

5 Tips for Reducing Your Consumption of Pop Culture through Movies.

The Pop Culture House of Worship

In the previous blog post, we defined Pop Culture, which consists of a variety of sources. In this post, I would like to focus on the first one: Movies. I will give some strategies and techniques for reducing and decreasing the amount of pop culture that we consume. The ultimate goal, of course, is to completely eliminate pop culture from our lives, or at least nearly eliminate the influence of pop culture in our lives. But I don’t recommend going cold turkey. Cold turkey might work for some people, but for others it can lead to reverting back to your former lifestyle. Therefore, my strategies don’t include “Just stop looking at it.” Instead, these strategies are people who feel they consume too much pop culture and want to cut back.

If you can cut back on at least one small area in your life where you consume pop culture, then you are headed in the right direction. Small victories matter. It’s all part of the Exit Strategy. Reduce, Refuse, Reject.

Movies

People watch movies for different reasons. The key is to identify why you watch them and what type of movies you watch. Understanding what tempts you will help know how to reduce your consumption. Here are a few reasons why people watch movies. Each reason comes with an idea for a substitute activity or a way to reduce consumption.

New Release – If you are obsessed with seeing the latest installment in your favorite franchise, then instead of catching it in the theaters, wait until it is released on DVD and then rent it from your local library. You might still be consuming it, but at least they won’t get your money, and it will teach you patience.

Social Butterfly – Instead of going to the movies or renting a movie with friends, why don’t you try actually socializing? Learn to play a new board game. Talk. Go to a new café. Seeing a movie isn’t very sociable since you can’t actually socialize during the movie. When your friend suggests you see a movie together, have a fun alternative activity to suggest. This will require you to think ahead of time for when the situation arises. The list of alterative activities is too big to list here but I’m sure you can think of plenty.

Not socializing.

Going Out – If you just enjoy the activity of going out to the movie theater, then try a historic theater, if you have one in your area. They often play older movies, some of which you might not have seen before. This way, you would still get the experience of going to the movies, but your money would be supporting a local historic site instead of a commercial enterprise.

Movies at Home – If you would rather stay home and watch a movie, try to limit yourself to older movies. There are a plethora of awesome, old movies that you probably have never seen. You are less susceptible to modern, pop culture influence if you watch a movie that is at least a few decades old. Some of my personal favorites include: Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace, and anything by Alfred Hitchcock.

Rotten Tomatoes – If you don’t like older movies, then try to avoid watching anything with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of less than 90%. I made this pledge years ago after wasting two hours on an awful movie, and it has really helped me avoid wasting my time on bad movies. If it doesn’t appeal to at least 90% of the population, then it’s not worth your precious time. And don’t fall into the trap of thinking there are great movies out there that the majority of people just don’t “get”. If a movie gets bad ratings, it’s not often due to the ratings coming from “unenlightened” people. It’s probably simply because the movie is bad. Even if there are exceptions to this rule, don’t take the chance. Your goal is to reduce, by any means necessary, not to try to figure out which movies are secretly good.

Keep in mind that these techniques are just the first step. The ultimate goal of our Anti Pop lifestyle is much deeper than this. But we have to walk before we can run. If you can make any of these changes that I have recommended, and you notice over the course of a few months that you are consuming less, then you are ready to continue implementation of the Exit Strategy. Reduce, Refuse, Reject.